The original name was GAIM, which stood for GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger. After pressure from AOL, the program was renamed to gaim.

However, on April 62007, the project development team announced the results of their talks with AOL. This included some name changes: gaim became Pidgin, libgaim became libpurple, and gaim-text became finch.[2]

Due to the legal problems, version 2.0 of the software was stuck in beta stages. Following the talks, it was said that the first official release of Pidgin 2.0.0 was hoped to happen during the two weeks from April 8, 2007.[3] However, Pidgin 2.0 did not release on time, but on April 22, 2007.

Pidgin 2.0.0 was released on May 3, 2007. This was the first version to be called Pidgin. It also contained a completely new graphics design.[4]